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[i]t Must Be Emphasized That Nonviolent Resistance Is Not A Method For Cowards; It Does Resist. If One Uses This Method Because He Is Afraid Or Merely Because He Lacks The Instruments Of Violence, He Is Not Truly Nonviolent. This Is Why Gandhi Often Said That If Cowardice Is The Only Alternative To Violence, It Is Better To Fight.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

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[i]t Must Be Emphasized

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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[i]t Must Be Emphasized That Nonviolent Resistance Is Not A Method For Cowards; It Does Resist. If One Uses This Method Because He Is Afraid Or Merely Because He Lacks The Instruments Of Violence, He Is Not Truly Nonviolent. This Is Why Gandhi Often Said That If Cowardice Is The Only Alternative To Violence, It Is Better To Fight.

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The Conservatives Who Say, "let Us Not Move So Fast," And The Extremists Who Say, "let Us Go Out And Whip The World ," Would Tell You That They Are As Far Apart As The Poles. But There Is A Striking Parallel: They Accomplish Nothing; For They Do Not Reach The People Who Have A Crying Need To Be Free.

Accomplish Nothing

Before It Is Too Late, We Must Narrow The Gaping Chasm Between Our Proclomations Of Peace And Our Lowly Deeds Which Precipitate And Perpetuate War.

For You Will Never Be What You Ought To Be Until They [your Fellow Humans] Are What They Ought To Be.

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Racial Understanding Is Not Something We Find, But Something That We Must Create. Through Education, We Seek To Change Attitudes.

[i]t Must Be Emphasized That Nonviolent Resistance Is Not A Method For Cowards; It Does Resist. If One Uses This Method Because He Is Afraid Or Merely Because He Lacks The Instruments Of Violence, He Is Not Truly Nonviolent. This Is Why Gandhi Often Said That If Cowardice Is The Only Alternative To Violence, It Is Better To Fight.

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Too Unconcerned To Love And Too Passionless To Hate, Too Detached To Be Selfish And Too Lifeless To Be Unselfish, Too Indifferent To Experience Joy And Too Cold To Express Sorrow, They Are Neither Dead Nor Alive; They Merely Exist.

But I Know, Somehow, That Only When It Is Dark Enough, Can You See The Stars.

We Have Also Come To This Hallowed Spot To Remind America Of The Fierce Urgency Of Now. This Is No Time To Engage In The Luxury Of Cooling Off Or To Take The Tranquilizing Drug Of Gradualism. Now Is The Time To Make Real The Promises Of Democracy

I Said To My Children, 'i'm Going To Work And Do Everything That I Can Do To See That You Get A Good Education. I Don't Ever Want You To Forget That There Are Millions Of God's Children Who Will Not And Cannot Get A Good Education, And I Don't Want You Feeling That You Are Better Than They Are. For You Will Never Be What You Ought To Be Until They Are What They Ought To Be.

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Our Lives Are Not Fully Lived If We're Not Willing To Die For Those We Love, For What We Believe.

I Have A Dream That One Day, Down In Alabama, With Its Vicious Racists, With Its Governor Having His Lips Dripping With The Words Of "interposition" And "nullification" - One Day Right There In Alabama Little Black Boys And Black Girls Will Be Able To Join Hands With Little White Boys And White Girls As Sisters And Brothers.

Civilization And Violence Are Antithetical Concepts.

I Refuse To Accept The View That Mankind Is So Tragically Bound To The Starless Midnight Of Racism And War That The Bright Daybreak Of Peace And Brotherhood Can Never Become A Reality... I Believe That Unarmed Truth And Unconditional Love Will Have The Final Word.

When Our Days Become Dreary With Low-hovering Clouds And Our Nights Become Darker Than A Thousand Midnights, We Will Know That We Are Living In The Creative Turmoil Of A Genuine Civilization Struggling To Be Born.

My Soul Is Too Glad And Too Great To Be At Heart The Enemy Of Any Man

I Know That God Is Not Going To Willfully Hurt Us. Why There Is Suffering Is The Business Of The Lord, But He Never Seems To Give Us More Than We Can Bear.

I May Be Crucified For My Beliefs And, If I Am, You Can Say, "he Died To Make Men Free.

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Now A Lot Of Us Are Preachers, And All Of Us Have Our Moral Convictions And Concerns, And So Often Have Problems With Power. There Is Nothing Wrong With Power If Power Is Used Correctly.

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They Asked If Our Own Nation Wasn't Using Massive Doses Of Violence To Solve Its Problems, To Bring About The Changes It Wanted. Their Questions Hit Home, And I Knew That I Could Never Again Raise My Voice Against The Violence Of The Oppressed In The Ghettos Without Having First Spoken Clearly To The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World Today-my Own Government. For The Sake Of Those Boys, For The Sake Of This Government, For The Sake Of Hundreds Of Thousands Trembling Under Our Violence, I Cannot Be Silent.

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African American

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Jesus Recognized That Love Is Greater Than Like.

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I Have A Dream That One Day Little Black Boys And Girls Will Be Holding Hands With Little White Boys And Girls.

The Only Weapon That We Have In Our Hands This Evening Is The Weapon Of Protest. That's All.

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What Are You Doing For Others?

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Success, Recognition, And Conformity Are The Bywords Of The Modern World Where Everyone Seems To Crave The Anesthetizing Security Of Being Identified With The Majority.

Love Is The Most Durable Power In The World. This Creative Force Is The Most Potent Instrument Available In Mankind's Quest For Peace And Security.

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If I Can Help Somebody As I Pass Along, If I Can Cheer Somebody With A Word Or Song, If I Can Show Somebody He's Traveling Wrong, Then My Living Will Not Be In Vain.

The Greatest Purveyor Of Violence In The World : My Own Government, I Can Not Be Silent.

Every Man Must Decide Whether He Will Walk In The Light Of Creative Altruism Or In The Darkness Of Destructive Selfishness.

Peace Is Not Merely A Distant Goal That We Seek, But A Means By Which We Arrive At That Goal.

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Many White Americans Of Good Will Have Never Connected Bigotry With Economic Exploitation. They Have Deplored Prejudice But Tolerated Or Ignored Economic Injustice.

Carve A Tunnel Of Hope Through The Dark Mountain Of Disappointment.

The Job Of The School Is To Teach So Well That Family Background Is No Longer An Issue.

Segregation Is The Adultery Of An Illicit Intercourse Between Injustice And Immorality.

Our Scientific Power Has Outrun Our Spiritual Power. We Have Guided Missiles And Misguided Men. Our Hope For Creative Living Lies In Our Ability To Reestablish The Spiritual Needs Of Our Lives In Personal Character And Social Justice. Without This Spiritual And Moral Reawakening We Shall Destroy Ourselves In The Misuse Of Our Own Instruments.

There Is Nothing More Majestic Than The Determined Courage Of Individuals Willing To Suffer And Sacrifice For Their Freedom And Dignity.

We Live In A World Of Guided Missiles And Misguided Men.

In No Sense Do I Advocate Evading Or Defying The Law . . That Would Lead To Anarchy.

The Means By Which We Live Have Outdistanced The Ends For Which We Live.

Inspirational Life

Discrimination Is A Hellhound That Gnaws At Negroes In Every Waking Moment Of Their Lives To Remind Them That The Lie Of Their Inferiority Is Accepted As Truth In The Society Dominating Them.

It's Not Burn Baby Burn, But Learn, Baby, Learn, So That You Can Earn, Baby, Earn.

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Every Man Is Somebody Because He Is A Child Of God.

School Takes 13 Years, Because That Is How Long It Takes To Break A Child's Spirit.

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The Ultimate Weakness Of Violence Is That It Is A Descending Spiral, Begetting The Very Thing It Seeks To Destroy. Instead Of Diminishing Evil, It Multiplies It.

We Must Shift The Arms Race Into A 'peace Race'.

In Order To Be True To One's Conscience And True To God, A Righteous Man Has No Alternative But To Refuse To Cooperate With An Evil System.

In Every Age And Every Generation, Men Have Envisioned A Promised Land. Some May Have Envisioned It With The Wrong Ideology, With The Wrong Philosophical Presupposition. But Men In Every Generation Thought In Terms Of Some Promised Land.

We Who In Engage In Nonviolent Direct Action Are Not The Creators Of Tension. We Merely Bring To The Surface The Hidden Tension That Is Already Alive.

There's Another Reason Why You Should Love Your Enemies, And That Is Because Hate Distorts The Personality Of The Hater. We Usually Think Of What Hate Does For The Individual Hated Or The Individuals Hated Or The Groups Hated. But It Is Even More Tragic, It Is Even More Ruinous And Injurious To The Individual Who Hates. [...] For The Person Who Hates, The True Becomes False And The False Becomes True. That's What Hate Does.

Power Properly Understood Is Nothing But The Ability To Achieve Purpose... One Of The Great Problems Of History Is That The Concepts Of Love And Power Have Usually Been Contrasted As Opposites --- Polar Opposites --- So That Love Is Identified With A Resignation Of Power, And Power With A Denial Of Love... What Is Needed Is A Realization That Power Without Love Is Reckless And Abusive, And Love Without Power Is Sentimental And Anemic. Power At Its Best Is Love Implementing The Demands Of Justice, And Justice At Its Best Is Power Correcting Everything That Stands Against Love.

Change Does Not Roll In On The Wheels Of Inevitability, But Comes Through Continuous Struggle.

I Have Decided To Love. If You Are Seeking The Highest Good, I Think You Can Find It Through Love. And The Beautiful Thing Is That We Are Moving Against Wrong When We Do It, Because John Was Right, God Is Love. He Who Hates Does Not Know God, But He Who Has Love Has The Key That Unlocks The Door To The Meaning Of Ultimate Reality.

In A Sense We've Come To Our Nation's Capital To Cash A Check. When The Architects Of Our Republic Wrote The Magnificent Words Of The Constitution And The Declaration Of Independence, They Were Signing A Promissory Note To Which Every American Was To Fall Heir. This Note Was A Promise That All Men - Yes, Black Men As Well As White Men - Would Be Guaranteed The Unalienable Rights Of Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness... America Has Given The Negro People A Bad Check, A Check Which Has Come Back Marked 'insufficient Funds.'

Pursuit Of Happiness

Our Scientific Power Has Outrun Our Spiritual Power. We Have Guided Missiles And Misguided Men.

We Are Now Faced With The Fact That Tomorrow Is Today. We Are Confronted With The Fierce Urgency Of Now. In This Unfolding Conundrum Of Life And History, There "is" Such A Thing As Being Too Late. This Is No Time For Apathy Or Complacency. This Is A Time For Vigorous And Postive Action.

The Ultimate Solution To The Race Problem Lies In The Willingness Of Men To Obey The Unenforceable.

If I Lived In China Or Even Russia, Or Any Totalitarian Country, Maybe I Could Understand Some Of These Illegal Injunctions. ... But Somewhere I Read Of The Freedom Of Assembly. Somewhere I Read Of The Freedom Of Speech. Somewhere I Read Of The Freedom Of The Press. Somewhere I Read That The Greatness Of America Is The Right To Protest For Right.

When We Ask Negroes To Abide By The Law, Let Us Also Declare That The White Man Does Not Abide By Law In The Ghettos. Day In And Day Out He Violates Welfare Laws To Deprive The Poor Of Their Meager Allotments; He Flagrantly Violates Building Codes And Regulations; His Police Make A Mockery Of Law; He Violates Laws On Equal Employment And Education And The Provisions Of Civil Services. The Slums Are The Handiwork Of A Vicious System Of The White Society; Negroes Live In Them, But They Do Not Make Them, Any More Than A Prisoner Makes A Prison.

The Truth May Hurt, But Love Helps Ease The Pain.

Call It Democracy, Or Call It Democratic Socialism, But There Must Be A Better Distribution Of Wealth Within This Country For All God's Children.

There Comes A Time When One Must Take The Position That Is Neither Safe Nor Politic Nor Popular, But He Must Do It Because Conscience Tells Him It Is Right.

I Have An Ultimate Faith In America And An Audacious Faith In Mankind.

In Spite Of Its Glowing Talk About The Welfare Of The Masses, Communism's Methods And Philosophy Strip Man Of His Dignity And Worth, Leaving Him As Little More Than A Depersonalized Cog In The Ever-turning Wheel Of The State.

The Negro Needs The White Man To Free Him From His Fears. The White Man Needs The Negro To Free Him From His Guilt.

Unconditional Love Will Have The Final Word In Reality.

Find A Voice In A Whisper.

Justice Too Long Delayed Is Justice Denied.

It Is Precisely Because Education Is The Road To Equality And Citizenship, That It Has Been Made More Elusive For Negroes Than Many Other Rights. The Walling Off Of Negroes From Equal Education Is Part Of The Historical Design To Submerge Him In Second Class Status. Therefore, As Negroes Have Struggled To Be Free They Have Had To Fight For The Opportunity For A Decent Education.

Never Forget That Everything Hitler Did In Germany Was Legal.

Libertarian Party

Thought Provoking

And Violence Is Impractical, Because The Old Eye For An Eye Philosophy Ends Up Leaving Everybody Blind .. It Is Immoral Because It Is A Descending Spiral Ending In Destruction For Everybody. Means And Ends Are Inseparable. The Means Represent The Ideal In The Making; In The Long Run Of History Destructive Means Cannot Bring About Constructive Ends.

We Can Walk Through The Darkest Night With The Radiant Conviction That All Things Work Together For The Good.

Working Together

Everybody Can Be Great...because Anybody Can Serve. You Don't Have To Have A College Degree To Serve. You Don't Have To Make Your Subject And Verb Agree To Serve. You Only Need A Heart Full Of Grace. A Soul Generated By Love.

Violence Multiplies Violence.

Black Power Is A Nihilistic Philosophy Born Out Of The Conviction That The Negro Can't Win... The View That American Society Is So Hopelessly Corrupt And Enmeshed In Evil That There Is No Possibility Of Salvation From Within.

I Am What I Am Because Of Who We All Are.

Use Me, God. Show Me How To Take Who I Am, Who I Want To Be, And What I Can Do, And Use It For A Purpose Greater Than Myself.

I Have A Dream, One Dream, Keep Dreaming. Dream Of Freedom, Justice Dreaming, Dreaming Of Equality And Hopefully No Longer Required To Dream Them

As I Like To Say To The People In Montgomery: "the Tension In This City Is Not Between White People And Negro People. The Tension Is, At Bottom, Between Justice And Injustice, Between The Forces Of Light And The Forces Of Darkness.

The Only Time People Do Not Like Praise Is When Too Much Of It Is Going Toward Someone Else.

Most Of These People Will Never Make The Headlines And Their Names Will Not Appear In Who's Who. Yet When Years Have Rolled Past And When The Blazing Light Of Truth Is Focused On This Marvelous Age In Which We Live - Men And Women Will Know And Children Will Be Taught That We Have A Finer Land, A Better People, A More Noble Civilization - Because These Humble Children Of God Were Willing To Suffer For Righteousness' Sake.

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Justice Is Love Correcting That Which Revolts Against Love.

I Never Intend To Adjust Myself To The Madness Of Militarism.

We Must Come To See That The End We Seek Is A Society At Peace With Itself, A Society That Can Live With Its Conscience.

The Richer We Have Become Materially, The Poorer We Become Morally And Spiritually. We Have Learned To Fly In The Air Like Birds And Swim In The Sea Like Fish, But We Have Not Learned The Simple Art Of Living Together As Brothers.

We Will Have To Repent In This Generation Not Merely For The Vitriolic Words And Actions Of The Bad People, But For The Appalling Silence Of The Good People.

Moral Principles Have Lost Their Distinctiveness. For Modern Man, Absolute Right And Absolute Wrong Are A Matter Of What The Majority Is Doing.

I Would Rather Be A Man Of Conviction Than A Man Of Conformity

Babies, We Are Told, Are The Latest News From Heaven.

History Will Have To Record That The Greatest Tragedy Of This Period Of Social Transition Was Not The Strident Clamor Of The Bad People, But The Appalling Silence Of The Good People. Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere. We Are Caught In An Inescapable Network Of Mutuality, Tied In A Single Garment Of Destiny. Whatever Affects One Directly, Affects All Indirectly. He Who Passively Accepts Evil Is As Much Involved In It As He Who Helps To Perpetrate It. He Who Accepts Evil Without Protesting Against It Is Really Cooperating With It.

A Nation That Will Keep People In Slavery For 244 Years Will "thingify" Them And Make Them Things. And Therefore, They Will Exploit Them And Poor People Generally Economically. And A Nation That Will Exploit Economically Will Have To Have Foreign Investments And Everything Else, And It Will Have To Use Its Military Might To Protect Them. All Of These Problems Are Tied Together. What I'm Saying Today Is That We Must Go From This Convention And Say, "america, You Must Be Born Again!"

In Some Not Too Distant Tomorrow The Radiant Stars Of Love And Brotherhood Will Shine Over Our Great Nation With All Their Scintillating Beauty.

Our Lives Begin To End The Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter.

Violence Is Not Only Impractical But Immoral.

I Would Urge You To Give Priority To The Search For God. Allow His Spirit To Permeate Your Being. ... If You Do Not Have A Deep And Patient Faith In God, You Will Be Powerless To Face The Delays, Disappointments, And Vicissitudes That Inevitably Come.

[people] Don't See That There's A Great Deal Of A Difference Between Nonresistance To Evil And Nonviolent Resistance.

Life Isn't Worth Living Until You Have Found Something Worth Dying For.

Like An Unchecked Cancer, Hate Corrodes The Personality And Eats Away Its Vital Unity. Hate Destroys A Man's Sense Of Values And His Objectivity. It Causes Him To Describe The Beautiful As Ugly And The Ugly As Beautiful, And To Confuse The True With The False And The False With The True.

The Potential Beauty Of Human Life Is Constantly Made Ugly By Man's Ever-recurring Song Of Retaliation.

In Struggling For Human Dignity The Oppressed People Of The World Must Not Allow Themselves To Become Bitter Or Indulge In Hate Campaigns. To Retaliate With Hate And Bitterness Would Do Nothing But Intensify The Hate In The World. Along The Way Of Life, Someone Must Have Sense Enough And Morality Enough To Cut Off The Chain Of Hate. This Can Be Done Only By Projecting The Ethics Of Love To The Center Of Our Lives.

I Know That Love Is Ultimately The Only Answer To Mankind's Problems. And I'm Going To Talk About It Everywhere I Go. I Know It Isn't Popular To Talk About It In Some Circles Today. I'm Not Talking About Emotional Bosh When I Talk About Love, I'm Talking About A Strong, Demanding Love.

If You Can't Be A Sun, Be A Star. For It Isn't By Size That You Win Or Fail. Be The Best Of Whatever You Are.

White Americans Must Be Made To Understand The Basic Motives Underlying Negro Demonstrations. Many Pent-up Resentments And Latent Frustrations Are Boiling Inside The Negro, And He Must Release Them. It Is Not A Threat But A Fact Of History That If An Oppressed People's Pent-up Emotions Are Not Nonviolently Released, They Will Be Violently Released.

I Think In This Phase, After The Negro Emerges In And From The Desegregated Society, Then A Great Deal Of Time Must Be Spent In Improving Standards Which Lag Behind To A Large Extent Because Of Segregation,discrimination, And The Legacy Of Slavery.

We Are Called To Speak For The Weak, For The Voiceless, For The Victims Of Our Nation And For Those It Calls Enemy, For No Document From Human Hands Can Make These Humans Any Less Our Brothers And Sisters.

Nonviolence Is An Imperative In Order To Bring About Ultimate Community.

You Have Very Little Morally Persuasive Power With People Who Can Feel Your Underlying Contempt.

Now Let Me Say That The Next Thing We Must Be Concerned About If We Are To Have Peace On Earth And Good Will Toward Men Is The Nonviolent Affirmation Of The Sacredness Of All Human Life. Every Man Is Somebody Because He Is A Child Of God.

I Am Not Unmindful That Some Of You Have Come Here Out Of Great Trials And Tribulations. Some Of You Have Come Fresh From Narrow Cells. Some Of You Have Come From Areas Where Your Quest For Freedom Left You Battered By The Storms Of Persecution And Staggered By The Winds Of Police Brutality. You Have Been The Veterans Of Creative Suffering. Continue To Work With The Faith That Unearned Suffering Is Redemptive.

Make Your Way To Death Row And Speak With The Tragic Victims Of Criminality. As They Prepare To Make Their Pathetic Walk To The Electric Chair, Their Hopeless Cry Is That Society Will Not Forgive. Capital Punishment Is Society's Final Assertion That It Will Not Forgive.

Now Let Us Begin. Now Let Us Rededicate Ourselves To The Long And Bitter - But Beautiful - Struggle For A New World.

I Cannot Sit Idly By In Atlanta And Not Be Concerned About What Happens In Birmingham.

Injustice Anywhere

The Government Can't Make People Love Me, But It Can Keep Them From Lynching Me.

Never, Never Be Afraid To Do What's Right, Especially If The Well-being Of A Person Or Animal Is At Stake. Society's Punishments Are Small Compared To The Wounds We Inflict On Our Soul When We Look The Other Way.

This Is No Time To Engage In The Luxury Of Cooling Off Or To Take The Tranquilizing Drug Of Gradualism.

I Have A Dream Speech

Look To A Day When People Will Not Be Judged By The Color Of Their Skin.

Of Course, There Is Nothing New About This Kind Of Civil Disobedience. It Was Seen Sublimely In The Refusal Of Shadrach, Meshach And Abednego To Obey The Laws Of Nebuchadnezzar Because A Higher Moral Law Was Involved. It Was Practiced Superbly By The Early Christians Who Were Willing To Face Hungry Lions And The Excruciating Pain Of Chopping Blocks, Before Submitting To Certain Unjust Laws Of The Roman Empire.

History Is The Long And Tragic Story Of The Fact That Privileged Groups Seldom Give Up Their Privileges Voluntarily.

[i] Know That Love Is Ultimately The Only Answer To Mankind's Problems.

I Look Forward Confidently To The Day When All Who Work For A Living Will Be One With No Thought To Their Separateness As Negroes, Jews, Italians Or Any Other Distinctions. This Will Be The Day When We Bring Into Full Realization The American Dream -- A Dream Yet Unfulfilled.

We Were Taking The Black Young Men Who Had Been Crippled By Our Society And Sending Them Eight Thousand Miles Away To Guarantee Liberties In Southeast Asia Which They Had Not Found In Southwest Georgia And East Harlem.

If America Does Not Use Her Vast Resources Of Wealth To End Poverty And Make It Possible For All Of God's Children To Have The Basic Necessities Of Life, She Too Will Go To Hell.

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